On Tuesday, Compassion & Choices announced that 15 states, plus Washington, D.C., have introduced right-to-die legislation since Nov. 19, when the group released Maynard’s call to action on what would have been her 30th birthday.

California opponents are already gearing up for the fight. Hearings on the California bill will begin March 25. O’Donnell will testify.

“There is a deadly mix if you combine our broken, profit-driven health care system with legalized assisted suicide, which would instantly become the cheapest treatment,” Marilyn Golden, a spokeswoman for Californians Against Assisted Suicide, a coalition of a number of groups opposing the California legislation, tells PEOPLE.

“Do we think insurers will do the right thing or the cheap thing?” she asks.

NYU bioethicist Art Caplan says O’Donnell and her daughter are powerful new voices for the right-to-die cause, much as Maynard was.

“I think people like this and others yet to come are going to have a very big impact in accelerating the momentum push that Brittany Maynard began,” he tells PEOPLE.

“These are people who are not elderly, not severely impaired, but folks you can identify with,” he says.

Donorovich supports her mom.

“I support her like she’s supported me through everything,” says Donorovich, a college sophomore who works full time at a local pet store. “She feels really strongly, and so do I. I don’t think she should have to go through what she’s having to go through.”

While O’Donnell would like to have the option of legally ending her own life, until then she intends to keep fighting.

Her next set of tests, on March 23, will determine if her tumors have grown; she’s hoping for the best.

“I’ve got plenty of reasons to live,” she says.

Bailey Donorovich (left) and her mom Christy O'Donnell

Lori Dorman

For more on Christy O’Donnell, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday